WARREN ELLIS is a graphic novelist, writer, public speaker and author of the NYT best-selling novel GUN MACHINE.

All Around The World

Published February 22, 2005 by Warren Ellis

Friday March 14, 2003:

At Bruce Sterling’s house in Austin, Texas, Howard Waldrop beams Cory Doctorow an mp3 of some swampy old rock’n’roll from the dawn of time. The next day, across town, his powerbook scorching the flesh off his legs, he beams it over to me in England. I put it up on a private server for Fraction in Kansas City and Laurenn in San Francisco, while reading the first few chapters of Cory’s new book, which he sent to me from an airport a few days before, squatting by the power outlet next to the public toilets. I put down Charlie Stross’ next book for this, shot down the phone from Scotland, presumably before he had to go out with his spear to hunt dinner. Make a note to send the mp3 to Deon Maas in South Africa. BÃ¡ra sends photos from her balcony in Reykjavik while Andy Cosby threatens my screenplay with substance-challenged 80s TV stars from LA. Jean-Pierre Dionnet says hello from somewhere in Asia, which reminds me I need to speak to Olivier Dahan, who by now is probably in the depths of France, shooting a film with Jean Reno. M Shakti, somewhere between 2003 America and 1920 Paris, lets me know she has audio-blogs up at anaiscam.com. Cory’s document goes in the file with the short story Kenji Siratori sent me from Tokyo.

In 1988, I was living in a room that was six feet long and six feet wide, with no phone, nothing but a record player with tape deck and a portable manual typewriter.

I remember waking up one afternoon and reaching for my last cigarette, that a girl had written “Good Morning” on with a biro before leaving, and thinking: Christ, the world’s got to be bigger than this.